The View From a Poetry Reading in Tel Aviv

Poet and scholar Yosefa Raz writes from a poetry reading turned "poetry riot" in Tel Aviv, Israel, nodding to the recent discussion around literary activism: "Many of the responses and counter-responses to Amy King’s panel were premised on the idea that activism is the right thing to do ... [b]ut the poetry riot I witnessed in Tel-Aviv made me consider how hard it is to have certainty about our poetry activism; perhaps we sometimes sing the battle cry out of tune, despite our good intentions?" More from "Literary Activism, Poetry Riots, and Other Deliriums: Notes from the Launch The Aircraft Carrier, a Poetry Collection by Roy Chicky Arad":

Book launches and other high-culture events generally happen at venues uptown, near the concert halls and movie theatres, the offices of the municipality and boutique hotels, in walking distance of seafront property. Roy Chicky Arad, a poet-provocateur in the poetry scene since the nineties, the founder of an influential poetry journal, but also in recent years an A-class journalist for Haaretz reporting on social injustices, decided to launch his eighth book, The Aircraft Carrier, in an unconventional setting, in the tough working class neighborhood of Ha-tikvah (literally “the hope”), in storefront Yemenite restaurant, within the covered vegetable market.

Weeks before the event, Arad invited his Facebook friends to step out of their comfort zone, and take bus #16 to Ha-tikvah neighborhood, where he now lives. The Saloof (named for a type of Yemenite pita) had never before hosted a book launch and Arad wanted to create a cultural event in what he dubbed “the East End of Tel-Aviv.” Everything about the launch was an attempt to break free of the image of a poetry reading as high culture, as a polite and boring event – Arad made sure to include figures from outside the poetry world, such as Barak Cohen, a lawyer and an activist whose organization “Going to the Bankers,” attempts to break the ruthless anonymity of financial institutions by confronting bankers and their family members in their own environments; another super-controversial figure at the launch was the performance artist Natali Cohen Vaxberg, who was recently arrested for posting a video in which she defecates on national flags, including the Israeli flag.

I arrived with my hand in a home-made sling, at best a pirate-like look, slightly disheveled by immigration, scanning the crowd for familiar faces, my first foray into the scene. At night the vegetable market was mostly closed; the restaurant spilling out into the street was decorated with multi-colored balloons like a birthday party. The happy crowd milled around buying lemonade and almond drink from giant dispensers, parting reluctantly for passing cars or motorcycles. After following the Israeli poetry scene from afar on Facebook it was funny to remember how small it actually is. All those different warring factions are after all the same thirty people: the latest genderqueer poet in a skirt and beard was standing next to the kingmaking editor of the “culture and literature” section of Haaretz, a tall man in glasses with milky frames and an impeccably tied ascot, who recently threw a highly publicized dinner party for Bibi and Sarah Netanyahu in an inscrutably ironic fuck-you gesture to the leftist literati.

Also, leaning against a parked car were a handful of poets from Ars-Poetica, a group of Mizrahi Jewish poets who recently declared poetry-war against Ashkenazi hegemonies. Their name is a pun and a reclaiming: in Hebrew slang, which mostly comes from Arabic, “Ars” is a pimp, or what Ashkenazis call Mizrahi Jewish men, implying a low-class, dolled-up masculinity. Roy Hassan’s poem “The Land of Ashkenaz,” speaks to the way in which the Ashkenazi hegemonic culture shaped and deformed the identity of Mizrahi Jews: “And yet I built myself a library/ of Ashkenazi poetry and literature/ like an Atheist reading scriptures/ to know how not to think/ to know how not to write.” Also on the scene: women in impossibly high heels, a cluster of sun-burned grizzled men, like a poetry motorcycle gang, studded with nose rings. One of the poems in Arad’s The Aircraft Carrier perfectly encapsulates the tiny, self-important scene: “The coffee cup is perched upon the saucer/and under it the table/ and under it the state.”

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At first the demonstrators who converged on the poetry reading seemed to be part of the show, the multi-colored balloons, the staff of the Saloof who clapped and serenaded each reader as they came to the stage, half supportive, half mocking...

Read the full report at Entropy.